Editorial: Shine a light on university pay

Opinion: HB 1252 would rightly require Colorado schools to create public databases of salaries and workloads.

University of Colorado at Denver student Erin Weller works on homework in this photo taken on the Auraria Campus in 2010. (Andy Cross, The Denver Post)

Posted: 02/20/2012 01:00:00 AM MST
By The Denver Post
denverpost.com

Colorado’s higher education institutions are under pressure these days as they face declining state support and public furor over repeated tuition increases.

That’s why we think they ought to be the biggest supporters of a measure in the state legislature that would require Colorado’s major universities to create searchable databases of professor and administrator salaries, teaching loads and other information.

It’s an opportunity for these institutions to reassure the taxpaying public that, even in the face of drastically reduced public subsidy, they are good stewards of the money they receive.

However, some higher education officials have qualms about the legislation, House Bill 1252.

Ken McConnellogue, University of Colorado system spokesman, said officials are worried about the expense of gathering information for the database and maintaining it.

“We’re all for transparency, but what is the cost to achieve transparency?” McConnellogue said, citing the complexity of CU’s operations and the bill’s requirement that data be updated every five days.

He also said the university already discloses at least some of the information required by the bill.

These are, no doubt, issues that ought to be addressed. But it strikes us that if CU, for instance, already is compiling the information, it shouldn’t be that hard to funnel it into a user-friendly database.

Nikkel has worked on a variety of other government transparency projects in Colorado and has found that where there’s a will, there’s a way.

She spoke highly of the cooperation she has gotten from the Colorado Department of Transportation in its efforts to create a database that, while different, has the same goals — to give taxpayers a look at how the agency spends money. “They have a desire to do this,” she said.